Description
Book SynopsisOffers the study of the legal structure crucial to Dante's Divine Comedy. This title makes the compelling case that Dante deliberately exploits this highly structured legal system to explore the phenomenon of exceptions to it, introducing Dante to crucial current debates about literature's relation to law, exceptionality, and sovereignty.
Trade Review"Written with grit and polemical brio, Justin Steinberg's book takes readers into the technical world of medieval legal conventions as they appear and even shape the vast and detailed legal system of Dante's Divine Comedy. Filling a substantial lacuna in the critical bibliography of the Commedia, the cogent and absolutely persuasive Dante and the Limits of the Law makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the poem." (Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University)"